ASARCORNIS SCUTULATA. 35 



notice o£ its occurrence that I know o£ in Eastern Benoal is of four Ijirds, 

 said to have been seen in Sino-l)hooni by Mr. W. Movlan, when out 

 shooting- witli two other o-nns ; of Avhich four Ijirds, one (a drake) 

 ^^•as shot. 



Colonel Graham seems to have found it common in the Lakhimpur 

 district of Assam, where, however, it appears that he only got one bird 

 from Sadiya, and he notes it as rare in Darrang. Godwin-Austen procured 

 one on the River Dunsiri, saw one in the Garo Hills, and knew of one 

 killed in Tezpur. Two were seen by myself in 188G, when partridge- 

 shooting in the Barpeta part of the Kamroop district, and were missed by 

 me with both l)ari'els at long I'anges. The bird is known and well described 

 by the Cacharies, but though I once heard a pair on the borders of the 

 Cachar and Naogang districts, I failed to get a sight of them. Specimens 

 have been obtained in Tavoy and Mergui districts, and these end the 

 localities hitherto recorded within our limits. Outside these limits it 

 extends — if the l)ird is really the same as ours — to the Malay Peninsula, 

 Sumatra (?), and Java. It thus seems probable that it will be found to 

 inhabit suitable localities in Eastern Bengal, where, however, it is of 

 extreme rarity, that it becomes less rare as we enter the Assam Valley, and 

 is found in some numbers throughout the Namba Forest, south of Brahma- 

 pootra, and the foot-hills and forest to the north of the same. In 

 Eastern Assam it becomes comparatively common, and extends through 

 (Aichar and the Indo-Burmese countries and Burmah to the Malay 

 Peninsula. Mr. E. H. Young (in loc. cit.) says that he once shot a 

 <lack, wdiich he l)elieves to have been of this species, in a tank in the 

 Central ' Provinces a few miles from forest-covered hills. The record is 

 not, of course, a certain one, and the locality is so extremely an unlikely 

 one that the identification was probably incorrect. 



In 1900 I was stationed at Dibrugarh, the headquarters of the 

 Lakhimpur district, and soon became well acquainted with this duck. 

 Indeed I had only been a few days in the station when a pair flew over 

 the tennis-courts while we were playing tennis, and during the five years 

 1 was in the district I must have kept some thirty or forty of them in a 

 tealery and seen others kept by planters and other people in the district. 



A Mr. W. D. Burness, for many years a planter in Lakhimpur district, 

 hiis been singularly successful in obtaining specimens of tin's fine duck, 

 although, before being told, he did not appreciate the value of the beautiful 

 birds, and shot and ate them. 



All along the foot-hills of the Himalayas there stretches a vast strip 



d2 



